The Thirty Years War Europe's tragedy

Review by Choice Review

The Thirty Years War was a cluster of armed struggles that transformed the interdynastic European political order, administrative structures within states, and the maintenance, training, and use of armies, which mushroomed in size and left broad swaths of devastation, disease, and death in their wake. Wilson's monumental study captures both the complexities of the political and military transformations and the level of brutality that the endemic struggles unleashed. He addresses historiographical debates on every subject and argues cogently for reassessments on issues ranging from the war's destructiveness to the generalship of Wallenstein. For Wilson (Univ. of Hull), earlier unresolved conflicts in Hungary, the Netherlands, and the Baltic Basin had seasoned the generation of leaders that cross his historical stage and would turn an imperial war into a European struggle. Unlike most studies, Wilson devotes as much energy to events after 1635 as to those before. His book focuses on war, but the battles punctuate the broader themes in his account rather than overshadow them. This will be the defining study of the Thirty Years War for the next generation. Includes maps, numerous battle plans, illustrations, tables, discursive endnotes, and a detailed index. Summing Up: Essential. All levels/libraries. P. G. Wallace Hartwick College

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by Booklist Review

For this analytical narrative of the 1618-48 wars that devastated central Europe, historian Wilson advances three theses: the wars were not inevitable, were not primarily about religion, and were mostly about the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire. Its constituent parts, from villages up to several electors holding the right to select the emperor, descriptively occupy Wilson's first chapters. Then comes a phrase familiar to avid history readers: the Defenestration of Prague, an attempted murder of imperial officials by Bohemian Protestants that ignited the conflict. Only in retrospect did the strife acquire coherence as the Thirty Years' War, and Wilson incisively cuts through its several phases to recount the objectives and options of the warring parties. Initially pitting the Catholic Hapsburg emperor against the elector of Palatine in alliance with rebellious Bohemia, and seemingly finished with the latter's defeat in the 1620 Battle of White Mountain, the war's subsequent intensifications at the instigation of specific leaders such as Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus buttress the author's position of noninevitability. Confidently argued, clearly written, Wilson's history is superb coverage of this pivotal period in European history.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2009 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

From the Defenestration of Prague in 1618 until the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, brutal warfare swept across Europe. In his monumental study of the causes and the consequences of the Thirty Years War, Wilson, a professor of history at the University of Hull in England, challenges traditional interpretations of the war as primarily religious. He explores instead the political, social, economic as well as religious forces behind the conflict-for example, an Ottoman incursion left the Hapsburg Empire considerably weakened and overshadowed by the Spanish empire. Wilson then provides a meticulous account of the war, introducing some of its great personalities: the crafty General Wallenstein; the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus, who preserved his state through canny political treaties and military operations; and Hapsburg archdukes Rudolf and Matthias, the brothers whose quarrels marked the future of Bohemia, Austria and Hungary. By the war's end, ravaged as all the states were by violence, disease and destruction, Europe was more stable, but with sovereign states rather than empires, and with a secular order. Wilson's scholarship and attention to both the details and the larger picture make his the definitive history of the Thirty Years War. 16 pages of color photos; 22 maps. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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